Thank you for this comprehensive response... but the problem is that there's only a one-line input box for the command that you want to run. The above suggestions presumably need three lines.

Also... the url+username+password etc. works perfectly well in the browswer. I can set up the mail to be sent, save everything, log out... go to a new browser and paste it in, and the mail job gets sent out perfectly.

admin is in the config.php file btw...

This must be frustrating for you... working with such a neophite... but believe me I appreciate your support.

Would you need to set the cronjob to activate log-in on multiple occasions during an embargoed nightime/early morning session given the fact that PHPList will continue to log itself out? I have the batch & throttle settings enabled, but of the 1500 mails I wish to send it only ever manages around 200 before logging itself out, therefore, I would need to keep telling it to log back in to ensure all mails get sent out...

I tried and send a test email to myself and it went through fine, however I have sent email to all the email ids in my database since this morning including my own email together but I am still yet to receive the mail? please can anyone help?

To my greatest surprise , I have been trying to even send a message to myself but I am not receiving anything anymore despite the fact that it gives the same report before
Please somebody help
Thanks in advance

I have set batch = 800
timed each batch = 86400 (24 hours)
time between each msg = 1 sec

now the browser says not to lose the browser. ok 800 emails are sent. now what will happen to the other emails remaining. will it be sent after 24 hours automatically or I have to process the queue after 24 hours manually.

It seems I'm having the exact same problem as you are. My server has a limit of 100 per hour. I set the batch size to 90 and the period to 3600. I left the mailqueue throttle to 0.

It all seems to be working except that after each hour I have to click on the "Process Queue" button otherwise phpList will never send out the next batch of 90 emails. It will just say its processing a batch and do nothing, just sit there.

Is there anything short of writing a cron job to fix this problem? As our mailing list grows to over 10,000 it will become impossible to be hitting the "Process Queue" button every hour.

The script is likely to time out if your server is running PHP-cgi instead of PHP-cli, and if you are using a batch period over 600 to 1200 seconds. A cron job might help in this case, though you'll probably have to explicitely reload every consecutive batch in your crontab file. You'll find an example titled "Cron job with batch processing (PHP-cgi)" in the documentation.
See also: http://docs.phplist.com/PhpInterfacesInfo

Using a mailqueue throttle of 1 or 2 seconds might be a good idea in shared hosting environments.

You should keep in mind that sending 10,000 emails at a rate of 90 messages per hour will take about 5 days to send, and would require more than 100 reloads in your crontab file. It might therefore be easier to dispense with using batch processing and rely on a mailqueue throttle of 40 seconds to get the same 90 messages per hour rate.